


the vast, the falling titan, the awful deep

by aunt_zelda



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Drowning, Dubious Consent, M/M, Manipulation, Multi, Religion, Seduction, Seduction to the Dark Side, Skydiving, Stalking, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:13:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27189136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda
Summary: Mike is desperate. Mike hasn’t slept well in such a long time and he’s got flickering images of that tormenting figure practically burned into his eyelids.And so Mike reads from the book, chanting the words that surge forth from his mouth in the swirl of the storm’s wind. He clutches the book with white knuckled fingers and faces down his tormenter, binding it to the book and himself to the Vast.It’s almost like a marriage: a book, a ceremony, a witness, a joining.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Michael "Mike" Crew/Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Tim Stoker, Michael "Mike" Crew/The Vast, Michael "Mike" Crew/Tim Stoker
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12
Collections: Fic In A Box





	the vast, the falling titan, the awful deep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bittercape (bittercape)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittercape/gifts).



> Laid out your pairings and looked a the Mike Crew ones and decided to merge them together into a fic that ended up being kinda a character study.

Mike has been frightened for much of his life. His own body was marked, and a flickering creature haunted his steps. On the best of days he could ignore it for the most part, hide the scars under his clothes and some makeup. But stormy days are terrible, the smell of ozone in the air and electricity reminding him of that initial strike in his childhood and bringing the horrible flickering thing to torment him. Even worse are the days when it’s clear and bright and the monster makes him think it’s about to storm, sends him scrambling to hide under a table or back inside his house. 

He seeks out books, each more dreadful than the last. His house crumbles and his parents die. He warps his body himself but still the scars remain. Finally, Mike finds his salvation in _Ex Altiora_. It lures him with captivating images, with the rush of wind and the swooping delight of vertigo. 

Mike is desperate. Mike hasn’t slept well in such a long time and he’s got flickering images of that tormenting figure practically burned into his eyelids.

And so Mike reads from the book, chanting the words that surge forth from his mouth in the swirl of the storm’s wind. He clutches the book with white knuckled fingers and faces down his tormenter, binding it to the book and himself to the Vast. 

It’s almost like a marriage: a book, a ceremony, a witness, a joining. 

There is every chance that jumping will merely kill him. Mike has to trust that instead the Vast will take him for its own. 

“I am yours!” 

In the rush of wind and crashing thunder, Mike leaps through the window into open air. 

He hears the rending of reality as the flickering creature is drawn into the book. Mike holds onto the book and flies and falls. 

He cannot see the ground. He cannot see the sky. The Vast has him in its grasp. 

The force of it pushes down on him from all sides. There’s no escape. There’s nowhere to go that it wouldn’t find him. It is everything and nothing. It is all that ever was and all that ever will be. 

He has but one choice left: submit, or let it crush him. 

Mike submits. 

\- - - 

Mike falls for a very long time. Or perhaps it is only an instant. 

All he knows is the falling, the exhilarating rush of helplessness in the face of the greatest of the powers. 

Eventually he even lets go of _Ex Altiora_ and watches it flutter off into the distance. It served its purpose, leading him to the Vast, and now it can go and draw in someone else, or possibly swallow up lesser beings. 

Mike’s chilled fingers grasp at wisps of clouds and streaks of light. How high up is he now? Is he so high that there are meteorites falling with him? Will he impact in a crater? But no, that would be the Buried’s way, and the Vast will not feed him to its opposite like that. 

Sometimes Mike is buffeted back and forth in invisible air currents. Sometimes his body is flung up and down, side to side, spinning his sense of direction until he falls up or floats down instead. 

Once he spots a terrified child clinging to the string of their balloon, crying so intensely they can’t even see Mike’s wave before they are lost behind another cloud. 

Mike sees a man flying, or perhaps gliding, distantly a few times, hears a cheery laugh, but he knows better than to cry out. He knows his voice would only be swallowed up like everything else in this place. 

The pressure returns, simultaneously stretching him out and collapsing him into a speck of meaningless dust. Mike goes limp and pliant in its grasp and lets it do with him as it will. 

The arousal is a surprise, but not an unwelcome one. Mike shifts his hips tentatively, met with the overwhelming force of the endless sky. It’s impossible, nothing that big should be able to stimulate him, surely anything trying to fuck him would rip him apart. It makes no sense and yet it works. Mike comes in a hot, heady rush and finally makes a sound since his leap. His moan swirls around him in warm tendrils and carries him down, down, down, until his feet make contact with the ground again. 

Mike knows that he is not the same man who stood on the ledge. He belongs to the Vast now. It has claimed him. It has marked him. It has ensured anyone who knows what to look for will see him for what he is. 

On shaking legs, Mike strides into his new world. 

\- - - 

Mike loves to travel. It’s so easy now, he can step off a rooftop in Cairo and end up at the Great Wall, or out of a small plane flying over Kansas and land in Sydney. The Vast guides him on his way. 

Single travelers are Mike’s favored prey. He supposes he might become more ambitious later, but for now he relishes the ability to torment individuals in a personal manner, either dangling them over the Vast’s maw or shoving them right inside. 

Today Mike fancies a bit of sailing. He favors the sky best of all but it’s good not to neglect the enormous stretches of ocean on Earth as the Vast’s hunting ground. 

It’s an easy thing to arrange for the kayaking trip to be rescheduled and only leave a single man out of the loop. Mike picks him after a brief bit of internet sleuthing, delighting in the idea of someone who might very well know what’s happening to him and still fall victim to it. The Magnus Archives has a public employee list and Tim Stoker is right there on Mike’s screen. 

Mike shows up with a kayak and finds Tim waiting, eyeing his watch in confusion and looking around for the others. 

After about twenty minutes of waiting Tim suggests they go out and boat as a pair instead of waiting for the no-shows to surface. Mike readily agrees, and paddles after Tim across the stretch of estuary water. 

He feels the pull of the Vast the deeper out to sea they get. There are many ways to feed the Falling Titan, Mike prefers the sky best of all but the sea has its appeal too. 

The water is still and clear and Mike relishes how small he feels even now. He looks up at the sky and blinks.

Tim’s screaming confirms what Mike already feels in his body. When he opens his eyes again he sees the world has tilted, the water angling down and the sky at an unnatural shift. It’s like those old drawings of people fearful of falling off the edge of the world, except it’s real and their little kayaks are plummeting along coursing waves. 

Mike smiles as Tim’s yelling almost overtakes the rush of the water. Will they fall completely? Will the whole world reverse and will they fall up into the sky itself? Mike can’t wait to find out!

Too late Mike processes the words Tim was yelling. He feels a strong hand on his arm, hauling him backwards, and suddenly he’s back on wretched ground again, watching his kayak tumble over the edge of existence. Tim is panting heavily and hugging him from behind. 

Mike cranes his neck and sees that Tim managed to find a rocky outcropping and wedge himself and his kayak onto it. He’s now “rescued” Mike in the process. 

Tim is a hero. How inconvenient. How frustrating. How … charming. 

“Just, just hold on,” Tim repeats over and over. “Someone will find us. Someone will come looking. Someone has to.”

“Yes.” Mike says, reluctantly letting the world reset and the horizon settle into alignment again. 

“It’s ok,” Tim says, relief flooding his voice. “It’s ok. It’s uhhh … some kind of hallucination.”

“Yeah?” Mike says, as if he’s being convinced. 

“Yeah. We must be dehydrated. And looked at the sun too much. You can see all sorts of crazy stuff from that.”

“Right.” Mike huffs a laugh. “Glad you were here to catch me. Before I did something stupid.”

“Glad I was here to help.” Tim manages a strained smile. 

With difficulty they paddle the lone kayak back to shore. They get a drink in the nearest pub and pointedly don’t talk about what transpired. 

After the fourth pint, Tim leans closer and eyes Mike for a signal to back off or keep going. Mike mirrors Tim and soon they’re fumbling against each other in the single stall bathroom. It amounts to an exchange of handjobs and phone numbers. 

Mike invites Tim to a skydiving class.

\- - - 

Tim smiles and charms, but he’s not an idiot by any means. He knows something is wrong about Mike.

Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for Mike, Tim only really notices when he’s stepped off the plane. 

Mike seizes his hands and spins through the air with him. He shouts the words Simon Fairchild taught him but Tim can’t hear over the rush of the wind as they plummet. 

And then suddenly there is no ground to plummet to. There is no distant plane. There are no other divers. 

There is only Tim and Mike and the endless blue sky. 

Tim grasps Mike’s wrists tightly. “What did you do?!” he screams, eyes wide and reeking of fear. 

It would be an easy thing to wrench free and feed Tim to Mike’s god. Mike’s done it before to people, and doubtless he’ll do it again to countless others.

Something stops him. It isn’t sentimentality, that was burnt out of him long ago, consumed as he gave himself over to the Vast. It isn’t just that Tim was fun to rut with against a wall either, there’s plenty of people left in the world for that too. 

Mike sees something in Tim. Something raw and furious and desperate. Something simmering to a boiling temperature. Something that’s eating away at his soul. 

“Let’s have a talk.” Mike snaps his fingers and they slow their decent to a gentle drifting sensation. 

“You know there’s different powers in the universe, right? You already serve one. I serve another.” Mike smirks. “What do you think of getting headhunted?”

Tim glances at the endless sky around them, the eerie quiet now that they’ve stopped falling so fast. “Don’t really have a choice, do I?” 

“Oh you do. It won’t take you unwilling. Well, it might, but you won’t come out right afterwards.” Tim thinks of the twisted creatures of light and shadow he’s seen over the years, echoes and flickers. Not people anymore. “Something’s going to eat you at some point. The Crawling Rot already took some nibbles I see.” He gestures to Tim’s scars, which make him look oddly dashing somehow. “And the Eye’s sunk deep into you and you didn’t even know it had. At least this would be an informed choice.”

Tim frowns, mulling that over and rubbing at the scars with one hand, the other still grasped firmly on Mike’s wrist. 

“How long do you think we’ve been falling?” Mike asks, effortlessly turning them over in the air. “A day? A week? A month?”

Tim shudders. “Doesn’t feel like long at all, but I know how this sort of thing goes. Could have been weeks, or years, and that’s just the start of my torment.”

“Or you could embrace it. Enjoy blue sky!” Mike spreads his free hand wide and gestures to the expanse around them. “No shame in seeking out a new patron. Or pursuing something other than monogamy.”

Tim snorts at that comment. 

“What is it that really scares you, Tim?” Mike asks. “Being trapped, or being powerless?”

Tim’s grip on Mike’s wrist tightens for a moment. “I’m not saying yes or no yet, but … hypothetically, what would that look like? If I were to say yes to this?”

Mike has him. They go back and forth for a while but it’s a dance, Tim putting up a bit of halfhearted protest to assure himself that he’s thinking it through. To absolve himself of any lingering guilt or anxiety later. 

When he’s ready, Mike leads him to the edge. He watches Tim jump. Whether Tim returns or not is entirely between Tim and the Vast. 

The Tim who returns stands a little taller, smirks with even more confidence than before. 

“What a rush!” Tim gasps out, gripping Mike’s shoulders with heavy hands. “I feel … I feel … amazing.” He fixes Mike with a piercing stare. “Can we have sex? Right now? Or is that like, blasphemous or something?”

“Not at all.” Mike beams. “I’ll show you how to do this as we fall. It’s amazing if you can time it right.”

Tim is a refreshingly fast learner. 

\- - -

They work Martin over together. Martin requires a gentle touch. With Tim, Mike could be overt and direct and glory in the spectacle. 

Martin has spent most of his life making himself small. Trying not to take up so much space. Trying to be quiet, unobtrusive, polite, inconsequential. The fact that he cannot hide at his current job, cannot fade into the background or blend in with the walls, causes him extreme amounts of anxiety. 

Mike listens to Tim discuss this as they glide over mountaintops and muses on ways to draw Martin in with them. He can feel his god’s approval thrumming at having converted Tim, and now it wants more. It always wants more of course but this is much more direct and specific. Another assistant from the Magnus Archives would please Mike’s god. 

Tim persuades Martin to go to the seaside with him, to a cliff overlooking the ocean. It’s pleasant and soothing to poor Martin’s frayed nerves. He’s quite relaxed, until Tim walks to the edge, sways with a faint smile, and then topples over the cliff. 

Martin, to his credit, bolts for him, stopping just at the edge. Which is when Mike slips behind him and gives him a shove before leaping after him. 

Martin hits the water with his eyes squeezed shut. He was expecting to hit hard, to feel jagged rocks, but he survives the fall. The water he plunges through is deeper than it ought to be so close to the shore. He sinks like a stone and soon the sunlight is a distant flicker high above him. 

Mike sinks after him, keeping far back enough that Martin can’t see him yet. Tim finds him and grasps him tight, pressing his lips to Mike’s neck in a soundless kiss. 

They watch together as Martin reaches the deepest pit, as the crushing weight of the water and the true magnitude of the ocean hits him. 

He might die. Mike made sure Tim understood that as a risk. Tim has faith though that Martin will prevail. He’s convinced that Martin is stronger than he looks and despite the cuddly exterior there’s a core of steel within. 

Mike has his doubts but he kept those to himself. It’s not as though it really matters: either way the Vast is fed. 

One moment they’re all in the sinking depths of the ocean, and the next they’re back on the cliff’s edge, Martin heaving water out of his lungs.

“You knew?” Martin asks of Tim when he can speak again. 

“I did.”

Martin pushes Tim hard. “Bastard.” He glares at Mike next. “And you, I know you. I had to deal with some of your statements. You shoved me?”

“I did.” 

Martin clenches his fists. “That’s not right. You could have just asked.”

“We did, in a way.” Tim shrugs. “More expedient like this.”

“And more fun.” Mike chimes in.

“That’s your idea of fun, is it?” Martin glares.

“Like there aren’t a whole host of people you’d like to send on an endless fall?” Mike counters. 

Martin opens his mouth to deny it, but he can’t. Mike reads the thoughts crossing his face, the realization sinking in. Martin can suck the air from people’s lungs, send them sprawling into endless voids, tilt the whole world on its axis. Martin, who wasted years slouching and apologizing, stands taller now. He can loom over people, he can make them feel small and insignificant and helpless. Martin is powerful now, and he knows it. 

“There you go.” Mike whistles, mimicking the sound of someone falling a long way.

“Now you’ve got it.” Tim spreads his hands. “Want to have some fun, Martin? Some real fun this time?”

Martin casts a longing look at the bench where they’d been sitting. “I … I suppose so.” His voice sounds heavy, and not in the fun way.

“Hey, Martin,” Tim’s expression softens and he takes Martin’s face in his hands. “That part wasn’t an act. I did have a fun day with you. We can keep doing that kind of thing, if you want.”

Martin looks relieved. They kiss. Mike observes with a detached curiosity. He doesn’t feel jealous, though he knows many people would feel jealous in this situation. 

Mike coughs pointedly after a while. 

Martin blushes and looks down as they break apart, but Tim doesn’t. 

“I was thinking of holding off on the ‘oh by the way you’re invited to threesomes’ bit until he’d gotten used to the whole Vast Avatar thing.” Tim says to Mike.

“Wait, what?” Martin looks from Tim to Mike. 

Mike winks. Tim smirks. 

Martin blushes redder but he doesn’t look away.


End file.
